Product

How Generalised Problems Kill Startups

It’s crazy how often I hear founders say, ‘I think the problem we’re really solving is X’. If you’ve temporarily forgotten why you started your business, you’re not alone.

As early-stage founders, it’s beaten into us that we need to deliver our elevator pitch as quickly as possible. This is generally a good idea — we have one mouth and two ears for a reason. But there’s an unintended consequence: when we spend so much time summing up the details, it’s easy to forget them altogether.

We take all the problems and frustrations that originally motivated us to dedicate our lives to solving them, and we find a general theme. The result is a generalised problem statement that’s both technically true and sounds highly valuable. And this is when the issues start.

Generalised problems are toxic

As you talk about a general problem over and again, most people will nod in agreement. It’s hard to question a general-but-important-sounding problem statement. It appears impressive and big.

But compressing a set of specific problems into a summary is like shrinking a photo into a thumbnail. As soon as you try to go…